Safeway, Inc. this month breaks a $100 million marketing campaign to reposition the supermarket chain, and launches a new store concept.
The yearlong “Ingredients for Life” effort breaks April 18 with TV, print, outdoor and Web ads highlighting Safeway’s perishables and private-label brands.
At the same time, Safeway launches a new store format, the “lifestyle” store with expanded natural and organic foods sections, full-service meat counters and bakeries, floral design centers and, in some stores, sushi bars and olive bars. Safeway has remodeled 142 stores so far, with plans to convert another 300 stores this year across the U.S. and Canada. “Lifestyle” stores earn higher weekly sales and ROI than stores that were remodeled under Safeway’s traditional format, the company reports.
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| Safeway’s new “lifestyle” includes more prepared foods |
All stores will adopt Safeway’s new “life icon” and redesigned logo on in-store signage, shopping bags, trucks and other shopper touchpoints. Safeway’s regional chains include Vons, Dominick’s, Carrs, Genuardi’s, Pavilions, Randalls and Tom Thumb.
Three TV spots show people facing everyday challenges and choices to demonstrate how Safeway now offers solutions. Spots, customized by regional chain, will run on network TV on prime-time programs including 24, Amazing Race, The Apprentice, CSI, Desperate Housewives and the season finales of American Idol, Everybody Loves Raymond and Survivor. Dailey & Associates, Los Angeles, handles.
“This is the most significant, fully integrated branding initiative in our history,” said executive VP-CMO Brian Cornell in a statement. “The ‘Ingredients for Life’ positioning distinguishes Safeway and defines the future of food retailing. It’s consumer centric and relevant to today’s consumers and their changing lifestyles.”
Pleasanton, CA-based Safeway has spent two years setting its new strategy. The company operates 1,802 stores in the U.S. and Canada, with fiscal 2004 sales of $35.8 billion.
Safeway spent much of 2004 recovering from a bitter 20-week strike by United Food & Commercial Workers union members against its California stores. The strike, which ended in March 2004, affected 900 California stores (289 of them Safeway’s, the rest Kroger’s and Albertson’s) and cost grocers an estimated $1 billion-plus in lost sales (Dec. 21, 2004 Xtra). Safeway’s 2004 sales were up only 0.3% from $35.7 billion in 2003, mostly because of the strike (and fiscal 2004, ended Jan. 1, 2005, was one week shorter).
